SUBJECT

The Directors Meeting with the President, 18 June

1.

The Director and the Deputy Director (Plans) met with the
President at 4:05 P.M., 18 June, to report on the trip to Southeast
Asia.

2.

The President opened the conversation by asking if we knew
where Joseph Alsop had got his information about the build-up of
ChiCom divisions in the
Fukien area. We said that we did not know [2
lines of source text not declassified]. The President
asked whether it would not be desirable to conduct an
investigation as to how Alsop had acquired this knowledge. The
Director commented that he did not think an investigation would
be fruitful but that he would like to take the matter under
advisement for consideration with USIB.

[Here follows discussion of an intelligence operation, not
identified in the memorandum.]

4.

The Director described his conversations in Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek, the President
having stated that he had read with interest the Directors report
from the field on this subject. When the Director had finished, the
President wondered out loud what Chiang would
do if he were told flatly that the United States would not support
him in any military [Page 247]operation against the Mainland. It was agreed that
Chiang might then “go it alone.” DD/P
described Chiangs belief that the Soviets
would not intervene as long as the ChiNats conducted their military
operations south of the Yangtse River. The President mused about
this and expressed the opinion that Soviet air support could readily
be brought to bear on the side of the ChiComs. No conclusions were
reached on what should be done to support
Chiang, although the Director expressed the
view, already presented to the Secretary of State and the Secretary
of Defense, that the United States Government should start to
stockpile air and amphibious equipment while maintaining control
over it.1

McCone met separately with Rusk and McNamara earlier on June 18.
According to records of the conversations drafted by Helms,
McNamara “did not
seem to feel that amphibious equipment should be stockpiled
until it became clear that ChiNat intelligence-gathering
missions demonstrated that an attack on the Mainland had some
chance of success.” Rusk
did not comment on Chiangs proposals.
(Central Intelligence Agency, DCI (McCone) Files, Job 80-B01285A,DCI Meetings With the
President)↩